I recently had a conversation with one of my clients about the fact that her family members bought a house they couldn’t afford. They acted on their unrealistic assumption that it was an investment and it will pay for itself through rentals. Even though the house is in a remote location and they have no experience in real estate! Sounds familiar?

The reason I’m writing about it is because all of the decisions economists make about our economy are based on the belief that markets are rational. They believe that people make decisions rationally, after they had weighed all the pros and cons. It makes me want to say: What planet are you from? Most people make decisions emotionally, not rationally. All marketers know that. That’s why they appeal to your imagination, to see yourself with that new car, new house, new refrigerator and so on, so you can FEEL good about yourself, LOOK GOOD to your neighbors etc.. These are all emotions, aren’t they? Our economy will never be right until the economists change their models and start including the emotional factors!

I teach more about emotions and their effect on every area of our lives in my classes, Your Amazing Whole Brain and Developing The Emotional Brain. You can find out more about them at www.brainupgrade.biz.

“Do things for others, it makes you feel better”. This is a very common spiritual principle that is going around but I must say that in my private practice I’m dealing with a lot of people who have spent their lives doing things for others and it didn’t make them feel better. In fact, all they got was disrespect, being taken for granted and being taken advantage of. There probably is a segment of the population that needs to be encouraged to do things for others, but a lot of other people need to be encouraged to take care of themselves and make sure they are meeting their own needs. They will probably always do things for others because they are generous and caring but without taking care of themselves first they end up feeling frustrated and often depressed. So next time when you want to do something for someone else stop and as yourself: is this what I really want to do? Is it really needed? Am I taking care of myself in this situation?

If parents only understood how the brain works! It would make their life a lot easier. For instance, research showed that if a one year old plays with the buttons on the TV while her/his parents are watching, parents often think the child is trying to spite them. It leads to punishment and unnecessary conflict. Young children are fascinated with objects and play with them when they can to find out what they do. Parents need to enjoy and assist that instead of getting annoyed.

Many parents rely too much on verbal communication, especially with young children. The may benefit from understanding that up till the age of 4 (more or less), the child operates as primarily right brain. The right brain has limited use of language and instead responds to non-verbal communication. That means coming over to the child, putting an arm around her and gently steering her to where the parent wants her to go. That means interacting with the child on his level: sitting down, squatting or at least bending over. As grown ups, we forget how tall we are in relationship to the child and how threatening it feels when a child has to look up all the time at the big shape over him.

Look for more upcoming information about parenting and non-verbal communication in the coming weeks.

It’s good to know that the science finally confirms “distributed model of intelligence where multiple areas of the brain are involved with cognitive ability”. In Brain Upgrade, and other methods that use movement and sensory input to improve intelligence, we have known that all along. The use of targeted physical activities increases interconnectedness of different brain areas, which results in immediate improvements in many learning skills, thinking patterns and behavior. People start acting smarter!